Review RPG Codex Review: Pillars of Eternity, by PrimeJunta

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Really, now that we've come this far, I would be very disappointed if we didn't get Review 5: Prosper's Graphic Illustration, Review 6: Cleveland Mark Blakemore's How I Played POE And Also Got Totally Ripped In Under 2 Weeks, and Review 7: Admiral Jimbob Comic.

Imma 'bout to beat them all to the punch:

 

[FeelTheRads]

I'm sorry, but Forgotten Realms is the epitomy of soulless fantasy settings... a useless grab-bag of 20 years of DnD fan-fiction.

Yep, and still better than POE's "totally not Forgotten Realms let me just change the names and remove a bunch of stuff and call it original" setting.

To me the most amazing thing is how horribly unbalanced it came out, considering balance was such a #1 concern it became a meme before release

Not so amazing when you consider the person behind it is someone who talks and talks and talks but never actually does anything.

- Hurr durr I like to write dry cuz that's clever
*his writing is badly received*
- Totally my fault gonna be better next time

- Hurr durr all rpgs suck imma balance all rpgs
*his own game is not balanced*
- It's the testers backers men misogyns neckbeards grognards totally gonna be better next time.

etc etc the circle of misery continues, Sawyer will never do anything and fanbots will continue buying their turds because next time it will be an awesome RPG with at least half a sentence written by Avellone

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Truly, a monocle worthy piece of art, sir. What is it titled?

Thank you for the kind words, Sir

The truth is, the name of the work evolved over time. The original working title was Project: Conformity, which soon became Dis Gon Be Gud - A Tribute to Daedalos. The creative focus eventually shifted, however, so I finally settled on Bald Man With Popcorn.

 

[ArchAngel]

Really, now that we've come this far, I would be very disappointed if we didn't get Review 5: Prosper's Graphic Illustration, Review 6: Cleveland Mark Blakemore's How I Played POE And Also Got Totally Ripped In Under 2 Weeks, and Review 7: Admiral Jimbob Comic.

Imma 'bout to beat them all to the punch:

Spoiler

I propose we put this review as official Codex one :D
Probably best describes most of the Codex members opinion on PoE, then, during and after.

 

[Azarkon]

The setting is complete shit. It's like Forgotten Realms if it got a vasectomy, was then castrated, and subsequently sterilized completely. All the epic, the mythic, the fantastic is stripped out, everything is banal and mundane. It neither has the careful thought and attention to detail that goes into pseudo historical settings, or the interesting social structures and dynamics. So what you're left with is absolutely nothing of interest, and worse, nothing to inspire, nothing to encourage you to suspend belief and immerse yourself. Just banal SEOUL SAUL SOWL over and over again. A fucktarded one trick pony "setting".

I'm sorry, but Forgotten Realms is the epitomy of soulless fantasy settings... a useless grab-bag of 20 years of DnD fan-fiction. You must be a Drizzt lover, poor sap. Heaven forbid that a world have... actual fantasy mechanics, consistent language and history backgrounds and real economic and cultural motivation. You might not *like* POE's world building, but to compare it to FR's ridiculous canon is, well , ridiculous. If anything , the only mechanical problem with POE's world building lends to the game is that it seems to have prompted some of the "encounter" design to be replaced with "ecological" design and led to some trash-mob annoyance ( this is a legitimate criticism of POE, not Forgotten Realms Rulz!!!)

The setting is less important than the presentation of it. I think the Baldur's Gate series did a pretty decent job with the setting they had - they limited the presence of Ed Greenwood's munchkins, built a version of the setting that is less obviously a bunch of superheroes high-level mages flying around saving the world, and improved the importance and the mystique of organizations such as the Twisted Rune, the Iron Throne, the Shadow Thieves, the Cowled Wizards, etc. Their version doesn't, therefore, exhibit the worst problems with the setting, and you'd never know you were playing in Ed Greenwood's self-insertion fantasy just from playing the game.

With Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian set up a lot of great ideas, but failed to deliver the presentation. Think about the first act of the game. The setup was great: a local lord driven mad with grief, children born without souls, opportunistic nobles fighting in the background, a demonic wind outside the town, people made desperate by suffering, etc. All the ingredients of a great drama. But do you deal with any of this in a dramatically compelling way? No. Instead you walk up to Raedric's castle, beat up his guards & him, and move on.

There's a great analogy here with Witcher 3's first act. There, you also deal with a local lord driven by grief, a child born dead, monsters outside of towns, people made desperate by suffering, etc. But there, the game actually makes a dramatic story out of it, one that has been rated one of the best quest chains in recent years. Imagine the baron quest in Witcher 3 being just you walking up to the baron's castle, beating up his guards & him, and then he gives you a paragraph about where Ciri is. It'd have been terrible - yet that's exactly what Pillars of Eternity did.

I've not criticized Pillars of Eternity's story up till now, but that's because I never thought it was a main draw of the game. Had it been, why did Avellone only write two characters? In retrospect, however, Obsidian ought to have stuck to what they were great at, instead of trying to come up with this new gameplay system that ended up being worse than the one their developers criticized.

Sadly, Pillars of Eternity is the opposite of what an Obsidian game used to be. It is technically competent, not an existing IP, and complete on release... Yet dramatically boring, intellectually mediocre, and absent of an emotional core.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Ignore Twitcher posts

Hide Twitcher posts

Do not reply to Twitcher posters

 

[Lhynn]

Witcher 3 blows poe out of the water, this is a truth youll have to deal with eventually.

 

[Jasede]

Well, one of the two contains actual effort.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Obsidian ought to have stuck to what they were great at, instead of trying to come up with this new gameplay system that ended up being worse than the one their developers criticized.

Pretty much this.

I'd imagine it would have saved quite a bit of time and effort to do a system that mimics BG2's version of D&D (in function) with a limited number classes and then focused on story, characters, and quests.

But hey, we have muscle wizards. That was worth it, right?

 

[Excidium II]

I'd imagine it would have saved quite a bit of time and effort to do a system that mimics BG2's version of D&D (in function) with a limited number classes and then focused on story, characters, and quests.

It's not like it's the same people doing system design and writing. It would still be trash

 

[Angthoron]

[...]Sadly, Pillars of Eternity is the opposite of what an Obsidian game used to be. It is technically competent, not an existing IP, and complete on release... Yet dramatically boring, intellectually mediocre, and absent of an emotional core.

Excellent post, fisted twice.

 

[Infinitron]

RPG Codex: Mercilessly taunting Obsidian for a decade about how their games are "flawed gem" disasters that only "storyfags" can appreciate, yet expecting them to keep on making them. Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. In that universe, MCA is considered the great betrayer of true RPGs on the Codex and Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

 

[Lhynn]

RPG Codex: Mercilessly taunting Obsidian for a decade about how their games are "flawed gem" disasters that only "storyfags" can appreciate, yet expecting them to keep on making them. Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. In that universe, MCA is considered the great betrayer of true RPGs on the Codex and Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

I just became dumber by reading this.

 

[Harold]

Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

 

[Irenaeus II]

RPG Codex: Mercilessly taunting Obsidian for a decade about how their games are "flawed gem" disasters that only "storyfags" can appreciate, yet expecting them to keep on making them. Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. In that universe, MCA is considered the great betrayer of true RPGs on the Codex and Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

I just became dumber by reading this.

Impossible.

 

[Infinitron]

Interview with Feargus from 2013: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/15/obsidians-urquhart-on-the-future-of-rpgs/

RPS: But anyway, do you look at something like Walking Dead and think, “Well, if we really want to focus on the choices, let’s strip out the combat and just make a story”?

If games like Alpha Protocol had been bigger hits, something like this might have happened. With a company whose games are constantly getting hammered for having "bad combat", it is not such a far-fetched scenario. If Feargus had been a different sort of guy, less of a grognard, I think the chips could have fallen that way.

 

[Angthoron]

If games like Alpha Protocol had been bigger hits, something like this might have happened. In a company whose games are constantly getting hammered for having "bad combat", it is not such a far-fetched scenario. If Feargus had been a different sort of guy, less of a grognard, I think the chips could have fallen that way.

Games like Alpha Protocol would be bigger hits if they were

A) Not as fucking flawed in gameplay department (and I won't even get into the technical aspects of that trainwreck)
B) Not being a derivative set of items riding the tide of BioWare and Spy Thrillers success
C) Not catering to the mainstream quite as much to make the "killer app" be completely worthless and unappreciated by its audience

I mean come on. AP could have been a good game if it wasn't designed as a Slam Dunk with a Killer App attached. All that's good about it is the reactivity in the story, but since it was made for people that gave zero fucks about it and probably didn't even understand this feature even fucking existed, all they saw was a shitty clone of Mass Effect that tried to be James Bond and what have you.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

If games like Alpha Protocol had been bigger hits, something like this might have happened. With a company whose games are constantly getting hammered for having "bad combat", it is not such a far-fetched scenario. If Feargus had been a different sort of guy, less of a grognard, I think the chips could have fallen that way.

Hang on, this is a company where most people are employed on MMOs. According to that recent interview they spotted a gap in the market for a "BG successor" and went for it while KS was in vogue. So they're just taking whatever opportunities they can. I find it strange to attribute any of this to Feargus being a "grognard".

Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

I thought the Codex was supposed to be a tiny, insignificant group of bitter gamers who are irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things when they complain about Obisidian?

 

[Ulminati]

RPG Codex: Mercilessly taunting Obsidian for a decade about how their games are "flawed gem" disasters that only "storyfags" can appreciate, yet expecting them to keep on making them. Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. In that universe, MCA is considered the great betrayer of true RPGs on the Codex and Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

Good... Good! Let the butthurt flow through you!

RPGCodex: "Your games have great stories and shit gameplay!"
Obsidian: "Ok, we kept gameplay the same and made the story bad! Happy?"

r00fles!

 

[Infinitron]

Hang on, this is a company where most people are employed on MMOs. According to that recent interview they spotted a gap in the market for a "BG successor" and went for it while KS was in vogue. So they're just taking whatever opportunities they can. I find it strange to attribute any of this to Feargus being a "grognard".

Read his reply to that question in the RPS interview to see why he's a grognard. Or this: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=9881

I thought the Codex was supposed to be a tiny, insignificant group of bitter gamers who are irrelevant in the bigger scheme of things when they complain about Obisidian?

Touche. Yeah, that's true, I was being inflammatory. It wasn't only the Codex saying that stuff, though - that was their problem.

 

[Excidium II]

Obsidian is over. Even MCA left

 

[markec]

RPG Codex: Mercilessly taunting Obsidian for a decade about how their games are "flawed gem" disasters that only "storyfags" can appreciate, yet expecting them to keep on making them. Newflash, kids. When you repeatedly tell a game developer he's really bad at something, eventually he's gonna divert resources towards that addressing that something.

Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. In that universe, MCA is considered the great betrayer of true RPGs on the Codex and Josh Sawyer is the underdog hero who keeps on trying to introduce oldschool mechanics where he can. Meaningful stats and skills are his equivalent of Durance and the Grieving Mother.

Interview with Feargus from 2013: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/15/obsidians-urquhart-on-the-future-of-rpgs/

RPS: But anyway, do you look at something like Walking Dead and think, “Well, if we really want to focus on the choices, let’s strip out the combat and just make a story”?

If games like Alpha Protocol had been bigger hits, something like this might have happened. With a company whose games are constantly getting hammered for having "bad combat", it is not such a far-fetched scenario. If Feargus had been a different sort of guy, less of a grognard, I think the chips could have fallen that way.

Man you are so full of shit its incredible. You have veteran devs with years of experience working on RPGs, with freedom to do what they want and no publisher interference and they manage to produce shit. Not only they didnt make anything better then what they did before but managed to make writing (the most memorable part of their previous games) look mediocre at best. And we should not complain because in your mind they are the only company that makes RPGs so we need to swallow anything they serve us and be happy. God forbid that PoE never existed since it would mean world would be poorer for one less shit game, and we cant have that.

 

[tdphys]

The setting is complete shit. It's like Forgotten Realms if it got a vasectomy, was then castrated, and subsequently sterilized completely. All the epic, the mythic, the fantastic is stripped out, everything is banal and mundane. It neither has the careful thought and attention to detail that goes into pseudo historical settings, or the interesting social structures and dynamics. So what you're left with is absolutely nothing of interest, and worse, nothing to inspire, nothing to encourage you to suspend belief and immerse yourself. Just banal SEOUL SAUL SOWL over and over again. A fucktarded one trick pony "setting".

I'm sorry, but Forgotten Realms is the epitomy of soulless fantasy settings... a useless grab-bag of 20 years of DnD fan-fiction. You must be a Drizzt lover, poor sap. Heaven forbid that a world have... actual fantasy mechanics, consistent language and history backgrounds and real economic and cultural motivation. You might not *like* POE's world building, but to compare it to FR's ridiculous canon is, well , ridiculous. If anything , the only mechanical problem with POE's world building lends to the game is that it seems to have prompted some of the "encounter" design to be replaced with "ecological" design and led to some trash-mob annoyance ( this is a legitimate criticism of POE, not Forgotten Realms Rulz!!!)

The setting is less important than the presentation of it. I think the Baldur's Gate series did a pretty decent job with the setting they had - they limited the presence of Ed Greenwood's munchkins, built a version of the setting that is less obviously a bunch of superheroes high-level mages flying around saving the world, and improved the importance and the mystique of organizations such as the Twisted Rune, the Iron Throne, the Shadow Thieves, the Cowled Wizards, etc. Their version doesn't, therefore, exhibit the worst problems with the setting, and you'd never know you were playing in Ed Greenwood's self-insertion fantasy just from playing the game.

With Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian set up a lot of great ideas, but failed to deliver the presentation. Think about the first act of the game. The setup was great: a local lord driven mad with grief, children born without souls, opportunistic nobles fighting in the background, a demonic wind outside the town, people made desperate by suffering, etc. All the ingredients of a great drama. But do you deal with any of this in a dramatically compelling way? No. Instead you walk up to Raedric's castle, beat up his guards & him, and move on.

There's a great analogy here with Witcher 3's first act. There, you also deal with a local lord driven by grief, a child born dead, monsters outside of towns, people made desperate by suffering, etc. But there, the game actually makes a dramatic story out of it, one that has been rated one of the best quest chains in recent years. Imagine the baron quest in Witcher 3 being just you walking up to the baron's castle, beating up his guards & him, and then he gives you a paragraph about where Ciri is. It'd have been terrible - yet that's exactly what Pillars of Eternity did.

I've not criticized Pillars of Eternity's story up till now, but that's because I never thought it was a main draw of the game. Had it been, why did Avellone only write two characters? In retrospect, however, Obsidian ought to have stuck to what they were great at, instead of trying to come up with this new gameplay system that ended up being worse than the one their developers criticized.

Sadly, Pillars of Eternity is the opposite of what an Obsidian game used to be. It is technically competent, not an existing IP, and complete on release... Yet dramatically boring, intellectually mediocre, and absent of an emotional core.

Actually, I agree with you somewhat there. I get the feeling that BG2 had to excel in presentation because of the banality of the setting. POE focused on world building, system mechanics and engine development and polish; Probably to the detriment of presentation. However, I think you can see some progression in presentation as the development went along (in terms of the first act being more presentable then later stages of the game); Now the IP exists, the engine exists, and it will be interesting to see if the upcoming expansions and games allow that creativity to flower... personally, not being much of a story-fag , I think some better encounter design would have put pillars in BG2 territory.

 

[Tigranes]

"Maybe in an alternate universe, there's an Obsidian Entertainment where story-centric games like KOTOR2 and Alpha Protocol were huge The Walking Dead-caliber breakout hits, leading the company to become a big budget CYOA interactive movie developer with Chris Avellone in a Ken Levine-like creative guru role. "

Remember, this is exactly what happened to Bioware, except replace Chris Avellone with David Gaider, and 'story-centric' to 'romance-centric'.

 

[Harold]

Truth be told, had Durance been romanceable, I might've actually finished the game instead of ragequitting at the end of Act II.